Cable companies in panic mode over massive loss of customers (video)

Cable companies have been wary of cord-cutting since the advent of Netflix years ago, but the speed at which it is occurring has been alarming for executives.

Five of the seven major cable networks have released their numbers for the third quarter, and collectively, the losses are staggering, with over 1 million cutting the cord in a recent three-month span.

The latest bad data points come from the Q3 earnings of all the big cable companies, which are mostly now public. DSLReports added up the damage, and it makes for bad reading if you’re a cable company exec.

“Only five of the seven biggest pay-TV providers have released their third-quarter subscriber data, but collectively these companies saw a net loss of 632,000 pay-TV subscribers during the period (385,000 for AT&T and DirecTV, 125,000 for Comcast, 104,000 for Charter, 18.000 for Verizon FiOS TV),” DSL wrote. When you add in the un-reported numbers from Dish and Altice, that number will be near-as-makes-no-difference 1 million.

To put that in perspective, a survey suggested last year that there were around 16 million cord-cutters in the US. Adding another million to that in Q3 alone shows just how fast the industry is changing.

Below is a news broadcast from March 2017, including interviews with customers about why they are dumping cable and cutting the cord.

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